Another Chinese Incubator Issue

[ric44]

Bought this thing used and decided a few days ago to set some eggs in it . Placed 2 dozen eggs in it and it ran without issue for a whole day . On day 2 I awoke in the morning to find the incubator had shut itself off . I restarted it and it ran fine for another 6 hours then stopped again once again I restarted it . Day 3 more of the same with it shutting down overnite . I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue ? Probably not much wrong but would like some idea of what to look at and maybe repair . I did order a Harris Farms Nurture Right in the meantime but would still like to fix this (Junk) one if possible . Any ideas would be appreciated .

cluded a pic of the control panel .

 

[casportpony]

That might be a hard problem to find & fix.

 

[ric44]

I think I might have ran it down . I was using a pretty small gauge extension cord so deleted that and plugged straight into wall receptacle . Also someone had installed the blower fan upside down . Seems to be doing ok now but will let it run unloaded a few days to be sure .

 

[Lizzy733]

Maybe blower fan the wrong way was overheating components? I'm also getting an offbrand special, but it's coming new (and from local) and will hopefully get here before my eggs so I can give it a good run-in while they settle from shipping.

I have an emergency backup broody, but she's not big enough to sit all of them on her own and is two weeks in.

I plan on calibrating a few external heat and humidity probes from my reptile Viv and ensuring it's always accurate, cause I'll grain of salt anything the internal sensors tell me.

I have a smart sensor too that I think will be relocated to the incubator for the duration of the hatch so I can get a graph of the temp/humidity changes over the whole hatch.

Hopefully, you've sorted it out for good tho.

 

[PatrickGale]

Bought this thing used and decided a few days ago to set some eggs in it . Placed 2 dozen eggs in it and it ran without issue for a whole day . On day 2 I awoke in the morning to find the incubator had shut itself off . I restarted it and it ran fine for another 6 hours then stopped again once again I restarted it . Day 3 more of the same with it shutting down overnite . I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue ? Probably not much wrong but would like some idea of what to look at and maybe repair . I did order a Harris Farms Nurture Right in the meantime but would still like to fix this (Junk) one if possible . Any ideas would be appreciated . cluded a pic of the control panel .

I have similar Chinese incubators and others that I loan out to people and classroom.

Usually once the electronics become unstable, the only good solution is warranty repair.

Since you bought it used, that is not an option. An elecrical engineer or someone used to repairing electronics might be able to help, but usually they have to catch the incubator as it shuts down, but before it cools off and resets.

Usually the problem is the thermostat detecting and over temperature and disconnecting power.

If you don’t want to keep it,
You can mail it to me.

I could take it apart and watch it operate with the control module open.

i don’t think you want to pay the cost of my time and round trip shipping though.

If I fix it, I can put it into use helping classrooms.

Here is one of my adds.
https://classifieds.ksl.com/listing/66075414

I tried to upload a picture of an 112 egg Chinese incubators like yours, but this site doesn’t.

Patrick Perry A Worm’s Tale® 256 South 1400 West Salt Lake City (385) 202-4446

 

[ric44]

I have similar Chinese incubators and others that I loan out to people and classroom.

Usually once the electronics become unstable, the only good solution is warranty repair.

Since you bought it used, that is not an option. An elecrical engineer or someone used to repairing electronics might be able to help, but usually they have to catch the incubator as it shuts down, but before it cools off and resets.

Usually the problem is the thermostat detecting and over temperature and disconnecting power.

If you don’t want to keep it,
You can mail it to me.

I could take it apart and watch it operate with the control module open.

i don’t think you want to pay the cost of my time and round trip shipping though.

If I fix it, I can put it into use helping classrooms.

Here is one of my adds.
https://classifieds.ksl.com/listing/66075414

I tried to upload a picture of an 112 egg Chinese incubators like yours, but this site doesn’t.

Patrick Perry A Worm’s Tale® 256 South 1400 West Salt Lake City (385) 202-4446

Got a follow up . The extension cord was not the problem . I did take it apart once again and inspected the circuit board a bit closer . The microswitch under the on off button didn’t look quite right where it was soldered to the PCB so I did heat up the soldering iron and reflowed the solder around the pins . Put it all back together and it’s been running nonstop now for about 60 hours without a hiccup . I do notice it has a bit of a problem keeping the temp at 37.5c without any additional insulation around it . Seems it might benefit with a larger heating element than it came equipped with . I may install one with more watts in the near future . I plan to hatch off a batch of quail eggs this spring with it as opposed to the Nuture Right 360 because the egg trays are much better suited to the smaller eggs .

 

[BirdmanCA]

Your incubator is a HHD brand that stands for
( Headache Headache Dead ) generic Chinese design incubator I have one that is under the same manufacture but is a different model I have the Mini 56s and your model looks to be the mini48
I have done some major modifications to my incubator including flipping the fan to blow upwards and installing a adjustable vent to the top of the lid and more I’ll be posting about the extended modifications I’ve done in a post soon just figured I would reach out to you and offer a link to the incubator manual wit tips and guidance I hope this helps pls keep me updated wit any other modifications you had to make to have it work better

If you have time check out my other post an leave a comment/ guess on the chicken breed I’m playing a guessing game and would love to see what you this he is

https://5.imimg.com/data5/HD/OF/WF/SELLER-91080958/hhd-56-egg-fully-automatic-poultry-incubator.pdf

 

[ric44]

Well a bit more info . Ordered a larger watt heating strip from Amazon and got it installed . I figured the old incubator was worth spending 12 bucks on if it did the trick . I think it was something like 25-35 watts larger than the old one . It was very apparent after doing the switch that the new element was much larger and heavier than the old one . Also the wires were larger gauge . Plugged it in to allow it to come to temp and it did so much faster than before . Also holds temp more consistantly . Allowed it to run and burn in a few hours with no problems . I'm hoping this spring it will hatch off a few quail.

 

[CaptainDuckman]

Ordered a larger watt heating strip from Amazon and got it installed .

You have a link to one of those strips? I have a similar incubator and I can already see modification is in order. You're right about the bottom fan. Mine is most likely upside down.

I calibrated the thing after getting about a 14% hatch rate on some quail. It's default calibration was 2 degrees C too low, so 95 degrees F in the middle section. Those places where the middle section screw together lose a lot of heat also, so I put some corrugated plastic board around that section. I started up a new batch with a thermometer in the bottom section, and I'm noticing it's only about 84 degrees Fahrenheit. My first thought was that I didn't plug the fan in.

Well, the fan is in there, plugged in, and so on, but it feels like it's blowing up instead of down. So, I was curious if you flipped yours and got better results.